Girona

The first inhabitants were Iberians, and Girona is the ancient Gerunda of the Ausetani people. The Romans built a citadel on the site and walled it in the 1st century BC, on a strategic corridor between the Empordà plain and the rest of Catalonia, linking the coast and France with Barcelona. The Visigoths ruled until the Moors took it in 715; Charlemagne retook it in 785, and it became one of the original counties of Catalonia before Wilfred the Hairy joined it to the County of Barcelona in 878.

A Jewish community is recorded from about 885 and flourished from the 12th century, when Girona had one of the most important Kabbalistic schools in Europe and its rabbi, Nahmanides, became Great Rabbi of Catalonia. The community ended in 1492, when Jews were forced to choose between conversion and exile; the Call was sealed off and built over. The county became a duchy in 1351, and since 1414 the heir to the throne has carried the title Prince of Girona.

The city lived through some twenty-five sieges. The most famous came in 1809, when about 35,000 Napoleonic troops besieged it from May to December; under Álvarez de Castro it held out until disease and hunger forced surrender, and the French ruled it until 1813. The western walls were demolished around 1900 to let the city grow, and the eastern ones were rebuilt between 1983 and 2003. After Franco's death, the excavation of the Call and the repainting of the river houses in 1982 marked a new confidence.

Girona's identity rests on its old town and its many layers of history. The rediscovery of the Call since the 1970s, with the Museum of Jewish History and the Nahmanides Institute in the Bonastruc ça Porta centre, has made it one of the best-preserved medieval Jewish quarters in the Iberian Peninsula. The cathedral's nave, the widest in Gothic architecture, and the coloured houses of the Onyar are the city's emblems, and the old town and cathedral have stood in for other places in films and in the sixth season of Game of Thrones.

The calendar peaks twice. Temps de Flors, which began as a small flower show in the 1950s, is held for a week each May and has become the city's biggest event. The Fires de Sant Narcís, in the week of the patron saint's feast on 29 October, are the city's main festival. Local legend asks every Gironí to kiss the bottom of the stone lioness, the Lleona, to be sure of a safe return home.

Sport has given the city a newer international profile. Since American riders of the US Postal Service team settled here in 1997, Girona has been a base for professional cyclists from around the world, who train on the roads of the surrounding hills. Girona FC, promoted to La Liga in 2017, finished third in 2023–24 and played in the Champions League, though it was relegated after the 2025–26 season. Human towers are built by the castellers of neighbouring Salt and the university.

About 106,000 people lived in the city in 2024, and about 156,000 in the urban area it forms with neighbouring Salt. Girona is the capital of its province and of the Gironès comarca, so administration, the university, the hospitals and services employ many residents, alongside tourism and the commerce of a regional centre.

The old town on the hill east of the Onyar is the visitors' Girona; most residents live on the plain to the west, in the Mercadal, the Eixample and the newer districts around the station. The river shapes daily life: it brought catastrophic floods in the past, and in summer it can dry to a trickle. In the evenings people meet in the Plaça de la Independència and along the river, and at weekends the Devesa park, with its paths and Saturday flea market, fills with families.

Day-trippers from Barcelona and the Costa Brava keep the old town busy in summer and during Temps de Flors, which drew more than 200,000 visitors in 2015.

Girona shares the cooking of Catalonia: pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with tomato and oil, botifarra pork sausage, grilled vegetables as escalivada, and the picada of ground nuts that thickens stews. Calçots, a specially grown onion, are grilled for a calçotada, and crema catalana, a custard of egg yolk, milk and sugar, is the classic dessert.

The city's own sweet is the xuixo, a deep-fried, sugar-coated cylinder of dough filled with crema catalana, said to have been created in the 1920s by Emili Puig in a shop on the Carrer de la Cort Reial after a French pastry cook showed him how to make cream-filled pastries. It is eaten at breakfast or with an afternoon coffee and has spread to other cities in Catalonia and Valencia.

Girona is also known for fine dining. El Celler de Can Roca, opened by the brothers Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca in 1986 beside their parents' restaurant, holds three Michelin stars and was ranked the best restaurant in the world in 2013 and 2015. For everyday eating, the cafés and restaurants around the Plaça de la Independència and the Mercat del Lleó serve the city.